Brendan Shanahan is officially on the job as the NHL's discipline czar—and he's showing his work.

Shanahan made his first two suspensions on Thursday—five games for Calgary's Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond and 10 games for Philadelphia’s Jody Shelley—and, just as he’d promised, posted videos on NHL.com explaining his reasoning.

In the Letourneau-Leblond video, which was released first, Shanahan explained how how the Flames forward violated the league's new boarding rule when he hit Vancouver’s Matt Clackson from behind on Tuesday night. He'll miss Calgary's final four preseason games and its regular-season opener.

"Leblond has time to avoid, or at the very least, minimize the check," Shanahan said. "Instead, Leblond takes a direct route and drives through the check hard and high and from behind. This is a clear violation of the boarding rule."

Later in the day, Shanahan dropped the hammer: 10 games for Shelley—five preseason, five regular-season—for boarding Toronto's Darryl Boyce on Wednesday. The punishment, Shanahan said, took Shelley's past violations into account—he was suspended twice last season alone—and was worded almost identically to the Letourneu-Leblond explanation.

"Shelley hit Boyce squarely from behind into the glass," Shanahan said in a league release. "Boyce's back was turned toward Shelley well before the contact, requiring that Shelley avoid or minimize the check. He did neither."

It’s a much-needed attempt at providing transparency to a system that, under former leader Colin Campbell, had turned into a mess of circular logic and perceived bias.

Campbell, who remains a league executive, stepped down from his disciplinary post in the summer after a solitary 13 years.

“This is one aspect of Colie’s job that he hates,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said at the time. "It could be the most thankless and worst job in hockey.”

Campbell, for all the criticism he absorbed, including some related to his son Gregory, who plays for the Boston Bruins, noted the need for change.

“It’s a job that needs, as I said to Gary, needs some fresh eyes, a fresh look,” Campbell said. “I’ve been doing it for 13 years. You’ve got to get out of that rut.”

In came Shanahan, who heads a new department of player safety, at a critical juncture for the league—concussions are as hot-button an issue as ever, and the league continues to try to combat the hits that cause them.

"In an effort to be very communicative and to educate, we are going to be very transparent," he told USA Today earlier this week. "I think it's important for all of our players to see all of the decisions being made and why."

"It's important that the color analyst in Florida gets it right because fans will go to bed trusting in what he says," Shanahan said. "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I do believe that professionals want to get it right. And I am going to make as much information available as possible."

Just two years removed from his playing career and with experience playing under both pre- and post-lockout rules, Shanahan brings a lot of positives to his role. That’s not lost on Bettman.

"It was a combination of his intelligence, leadership abilities, toughness, knowledge of the game, passion for the game and the respect that people have for him after what will be acknowledged at some point I'm sure as a two-decade Hall of Fame career," Bettman told USA Today.

Thursday was a glimpse into Shanahan’s approach as disciplinarian, and the response was exceedingly positive—though not necessarily a surprise for people who watched his progression from All-Star to lockout mediator to progressive league executive. And it’s likely not a surprise to Campbell.

“This is a natural progression to move this over,” Campbell said in June. “At the end of the day, someone has to make a decision. That will be Brendan’s job now.”

On Twitter, the reaction to Shanahan’s process was almost effusive, and the contrast with Campbell’s approach was lost on few.

Not every decision will be as easy as Shanahan’s first two, though: Letourneau-Leblond and Shelley are players with a history of borderline hits who delivered checks patently against NHL rules. When the rulings are for plays that are less cut-and-dry, and when the hits are perpetrated by guys whose reputations don’t precede them, the spotlight will be back on Shanahan.

But if Thursday is any indication, he won’t shrink from it. At the very least, we’ll understand his rationale.